Tracey Thorne

Tracey Thorne (British) documentary photographer and photographic artist

 

Biography 

 

Tracey is a documentary photographer and photographic artist, who lives and works in Birmingham, UK. She was born in Cornwall, and grew up in a small rural mining community.  She has lived in Birmingham, since the late 1980s. In recent years Tracey has also built a substantial body of work internationally, in Jamaica, where she resided and worked for a significant period.

 

She has a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in English/History, and draws inspiration from historical narratives and cultural contexts in her artistic practice. Additionally, a Master's (MA) degree in Public Health often provides a unique lens through which she thinks about social issues and their impact on communities.

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Artist Statement

 

Tracey works predominantly with digital photography and the cyanotype photographic process. Her image-making is bound up in her experiences of urban and rural spaces, exploring themes relating to place, visual culture, and collective memory. 

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Her work frequently explores the textual layers found in specific locations where she uses photography to help evoke the feeling of place and understand the identity of those spaces and its material richness. The work often focuses on typography found in the landscape. She also continues to explore in her work issues relating to the human-altered landscape from centuries of extractive industries and environmental issues linked to climate change. More recently this has expanded to start to also think about the lasting legacies of British colonisation on people, communities and the land. 
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Tracey has a special interest in working with historical artifacts and found objects to uncover alternative or untold histories.

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She has exhibited working in the UK since 2017 and recipient of a number of artist awards.  

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New for 2025

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My last project Intended for Jamaica is in 2025 being developed in to a long term research project that will use the Boulton & Watt Archive held at the Library of Birmingham into a case study to further explore Birmingham's colonial trade and connections to slavery.  Follow my research journey here on a dedicated blog - My Research Blog.

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My other photography mainly work on visual and material culture of places and work on British protests will now be featured on a new blog on Tumblr @traceyathorne

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